latexbuild 0.0.1

Rendering Jinja2 templates for Latex

Latex is a great typesetting engine for large, complex projects. However, its native build tools lack a straightforward templating engine where multiple people can collaborate on a similar document. For example, imagine a scenario where five professors in the same department need to create a course syllabus. Grading requirements may be standardized at the department level, which individual lessons are up to the professors. If course syllabuses were created using Jinja2 templating and Latex, the department could create a base template that listed the department standards and ask the professors to extend the base template for each course’s syllabus. That way, the professors need not worry about cross-course content or department-wide formatting requirements: these would be handled by the base template.

Assume the department saves the following content in template.tex:

% FILENAME: template.tex
\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\title{Economics Departmnt: \BLOCK{block title}\BLOCK{endblock}}
\author{\vspace{-5ex}}
\date{\vspace{-5ex}}

\begin{document}
\maketitle

\section{Department Introduction}
This is a standard message from the department
that will appear in every syllabus in exactly this place.
Professors shouldn't have to think about this.

\section{Greatness}
\BLOCK{block greatness}\BLOCK{endblock}

\section{Boredom}
\BLOCK{block boredom}\BLOCK{endblock}

\end{document}

Now that the temlate has been created, the accounting professor can create his syllabus in the following way:

%- extends "template.tex"

% FILENAME: accounting.tex

%- block title
Accounting
%- endblock

%- block greatness
This is a great, accounting-specific block
%- endblock

%- block boredom
This is a boring, accounting-specific block
%- endblock

Additionally, the statistics professor can create her syllabus as follows:

%- extends "template.tex"

% FILENAME: statistics.tex

%- block title
Statistics for juggernauts
%- endblock

%- block greatness
This is a great, statistics-specific block
%- endblock

%- block boredom
This is a boring, statistics-specific block
%- endblock

Most Jinja2 templating functionality is supported, using the same syntax alterations as the latex python package referenced in this README’s introduction. For example, if you would like to loop over values and place them in a Latex list, you may use the following code.

This snipped provides an ordered list over the list variable passed from Python:

\begin{enumerate}
  %- for variable in variable_list
  \item \VAR{variable}
  %- endfor
\end{enumerate}

Alternatively, snippet provides an unordered list over the list variable passed from Python:

\begin{itemize}
  %- for variable in variable_list
  \item \VAR{variable}
  %- endfor
\end{itemize}

This section will continue being updated over time with more examples.

Building Latex Output

For the simplest project, you can build a Jinja2-templated latex source repository with the following code:

from latexbuild import build_pdf, build_html, render_latex_template

PATH_JINJA2 = "/path/to/your/latex/jinja2/root"
PATH_TEMPLATE_RELATIVE_TO_PATH_JINJA2 = "template/filepath.tex"
PATH_OUTPUT_PDF = "/path/to/your/output/directory/MYOUTPUTFILE.pdf"
PATH_OUTPUT_HTML = "/path/to/your/output/directory/MYOUTPUTFILE.html"

# Build Jinja2 template, compile result latex, move compiled file to output path,
# and clean up all intermediate files
build_pdf(PATH_JINJA2, PATH_TEMPLATE_RELATIVE_TO_PATH_JINJA2, PATH_OUTPUT_PDF)
build_html(PATH_JINJA2, PATH_TEMPLATE_RELATIVE_TO_PATH_JINJA2, PATH_OUTPUT_HTML)

# If you just want the rendered template's text in a python variable, do the following (assuming you have no variables to pass):
render_latex_template(PATH_JINJA2, PATH_TEMPLATE_RELATIVE_TO_PATH_JINJA2)

# If your template renders Jinja2 variables, most interfaces provide
# a dictionary parameter. See below for an example for simply
# rendering the template's text in Python
DICT_VALS = {
    'var1': 'my variable 1 value',
    'list_var': ['item 1 for analysis', 'item 2 for analysis']
    }
render_latex_template(
    PATH_JINJA2,
    PATH_TEMPLATE_RELATIVE_TO_PATH_JINJA2,
    DICT_VALS,
    )

For more complex builds, the system is designed to accept whatever command line arguments you wish to use. Please see the source file latexbuild/build.py and read the LatexBuild class’s documentation for more information.

Supported systems

1. Tried only on Python 3.4

2. Tried only on Linux Mint 17.3

Written by

Samuel Roeca